


Twelve Days of Satinalia

by miraphora



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 09:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16930800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraphora/pseuds/miraphora
Summary: Inspired, and originally appearing as replies to THIS ART of Solas and Blackwall making toys together (seriously, go take a look at the art and leave some love before reading, it’s adorable): http://momoconteng.tumblr.com/post/133668738347/the-elf-the-toymakerAnd so Skyhold Secret Santa was born.





	Twelve Days of Satinalia

A carved and smiling mabari with a white patch on its breast and alert ears and an armored harness with a fur ruff, painted with careful detail, is sitting on Cullen’s desk on the third day of Satinalia.

A sleek arctic fox with glittering paws and the hint of teeth behind a noble pose appears on the rococo end table by Vivienne’s settee. Fur has been flocked along the length of the clever creature, and it is soft beneath the surreptitious stroke of a manicured dark fingertip.

For Josephine, he goes begging, into the dark of the Undercroft, offering a boon, anything, in exchange for the services of the diminutive artificer. Dagna latches onto the project with characteristic enthusiasm, and when the 5th day of Satinalia dawns, there is an Antivan duelist, articulated and made with hidden runes and bits of clockwork that, when wound, sketches a bow and stands en garde before executing a series of elegant sword forms. He is standing in the stairwell outside her office door, barely breathing, and hears her gasp and soft exclamation. And that is his own gift–-more than he deserves, more than he could ask for.

Dagna is inspired, and on the sixth day of Satinalia, Sera sits down to an impromptu tea of filched chocolate biscuits and finds a tiny clockwork bee fluttering its clever little wings and creeping along the edge of her window. Her tea grows cold as she lets the tiny creature climb over her slim fingers, enchanted.

The next time Dorian and Bull meet in the room in the Herald’s Rest, there is a shadowbox waiting on the bed. In the first scene, a bull grazing in a field is startled by a tiny green snake in the grass with glittering eyes of sparking dawnstone-–in the second scene, the snake has reared up to strike like the cobras that dance in the markets, and Dorian leans closer to see the tiny intricate details and the edges of scales rendered with dry brushstrokes-–in the third scene, the snake is coiled and draped somnolent with a contented snakey grin atop the head of the bull, and a wreath of blazing orange roses was carved around the neck of the bull. Dorian flushed–-to have some secret gift-giver comment so baldly on their relationship in the lang d’fleur. Bull was quietly amused.

Cole is watching when Solas leaves the menagerie, still and hidden in the corner. There are tiny carved nugs, kittens, mabari pups, the small tender creatures of farms and field–-but the best part is the tiny mural painted inside the little barn. The fierce wolf and the graceful halla, lying together like a story he had once heard Mother Giselle tell the children about a lion and a lamb. He traces the delicate brushstrokes with his finger, but he can’t follow the pain that touches here.

When Varric comes into the Great Hall to sit before the fire and work on his latest chapter of Swords and Shields, there is a small carved figure sitting at his usual spot. The little brass plaque on the base reads “Knight-Captain Adelaide” but doesn’t look a damn bit like the redhead who graces the covers of his most ridiculous literary venture. In fact, it looks an awful lot like a certain Seeker…

The next day, the Seeker finds a similarly-labeled carving in her own room above the smithy. The figure is brave and stalwart, sword aloft, red hair blowing in an unfelt breeze. It sparks a giddy joy in her heart, and she places it in pride of place beside her narrow bed, next to the dogeared copy of the most recent chapter of her favorite serial.

Leliana is startled into a laugh when she finds the woven nest on her desk in the aerie. Tiny carved pink nugs curl, blind and sleeping, in the hollow of the nest, and perched over them on the edge of the nest, with a perplexed tilt to its fluffed neck, is a handsomely detailed crow with the trailing edge of a blanket captured in its beak. No one is there to witness it, but her nose scrunches endearingly, and she tucks the edges of the tiny blanket delicately around the little carved nugs. That evening, she sends a packet of tightly-rolled notes, each with a short message, to one of her agents, to be distributed out to other, farther flung operatives. She looks at the little nestful of nugs and the protective crow, and pretends she is not being very ridiculous indeed.

On the twelfth day of Satinalia, the entire Inner Circle is curious with anticipation, wondering what the secret gift-givers will do next. In the morning, before the usual ritual of holding court and hearing grievances and making judgments, the Inquisitor comes down from her chambers to find a pile of gifts has manifested around her throne in the night. Her eyes are huge, hands clasped one over her mouth and one over the still-flat slope of her belly, at the sight of the plush knitted body of the hobby mabari on its small wooden wheels, the painted blocks arranged in a tower with bulky crenelations, the squat little table topped with an elaborately carved and nearly to-scale oaken model of a seaside castle, complete with little halla and druffalo and horses standing in the paddocks outside the walls–-and beside the throne itself, draped with a crocheted blanket in a riot of colors, a carved wood and wicker bassinet.

Her vision is spangled with tears of utter surprise and pleasure–-Maker, how had anyone known??–-and when she hears the soft “Maker’s breath” of startlement behind her, as if a man has just found the ground beneath his feet is gone, she whirls and throws herself into her lover’s arms. The way he holds her close, the tender, wondering hand on the small of her back, is the greatest gift of all.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally curated into a single post on tumblr during the holidays of 2015, but I'm not post-dating it since it's the holidays again.


End file.
